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CISA KEV · ACTIVELY EXPLOITED
HIGH severity

CVE-2008-3431 — Virtualbox

HIGH

CVE-2008-3431 is a high-severity (CVSS 8.8) vulnerability in oracle virtualbox. It is in CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog (added 2022-03-03) — treat it as actively exploited and patch now. A fix is available — see the affected versions and patch details below.

The VBoxDrvNtDeviceControl function in VBoxDrv.sys in Sun xVM VirtualBox before 1.6.4 uses the METHOD_NEITHER communication method for IOCTLs and does not properly validate a buffer…

Published
Updated
Affected
1 product
Patched
See advisory
Exploits
5 known
Exploitation data as of Oct 22, 2026 · OSV.dev, NVD, CISA KEV, FIRST.org (EPSS)

Exploitation Status

Actively exploited in the wild

  • Confirmed by CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog on 2022-03-03. Federal agencies were required to remediate by 2022-03-24.
  • A successful exploit gives an attacker total control of the affected component, not partial access.

Exploitation and automatability from CISA (KEV catalog and SSVC triage) for CVE-2008-3431.

EPSS Exploitation Probability

via FIRST.org ↗
6.9%probability of exploitation in next 30 days
Lower Risk0.00%
Lower risk than most CVEs94th percentile — riskier than 94% of all scored CVEsHighest risk
4.88%5.73%6.58%7.43%5.4%6.9%Apr 26Sep 26Oct 26

Probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, from FIRST.org EPSS.

How urgent is this, really

CVE-2008-3431 by exploitation likelihood (EPSS) against impact (CVSS). Outside the shaded patch-first corner.

Where this sits among everything scored

Of 394,415 CVEs with a current EPSS score, this one falls in the < 10% band (highlighted). Counts from FIRST.org, log-scaled.

Description

The VBoxDrvNtDeviceControl function in VBoxDrv.sys in Sun xVM VirtualBox before 1.6.4 uses the METHOD_NEITHER communication method for IOCTLs and does not properly validate a buffer associated with the Irp object, which allows local users to gain privileges by opening the \.\VBoxDrv device and calling DeviceIoControl to send a crafted kernel address.

Affected Products

1 product · 1 configurations
Application
virtualboxoracle
< 1.6.4
range
Exploits & PoCs
5

Research use only. For defensive security, authorized penetration testing, and academic research only. Never execute exploit code against systems without explicit written authorization.

EDB-6218dosmultiple✓ Verified

Sun xVM VirtualBox < 1.6.4 - Privilege Escalation (PoC)

by Core Security · Aug 10, 2008

Exploit-DB Source

Detection & mitigation playbook

Vendor / appliance

  1. Detect

    Inventory every oracle virtualbox deployment and check each version against the affected-products list above.

  2. Fix

    Apply the oracle virtualbox security patch or hotfix for CVE-2008-3431 on the affected version, following the vendor advisory for your exact build.

  3. Workarounds

    If you can't upgrade right away: gate or disable the affected feature, validate untrusted input at the boundary, and avoid passing attacker-controlled data into the vulnerable path. O3's runtime protection blocks exploitation in production as an interim safeguard until the upgrade lands. Alongside that, restrict the management interface to trusted networks and apply the vendor's recommended configuration mitigations.

Frequently Asked Questions

The VBoxDrvNtDeviceControl function in VBoxDrv.sys in Sun xVM VirtualBox before 1.6.4 uses the METHOD_NEITHER communication method for IOCTLs and does not properly validate a buffer associated with the Irp object, which allows local users to gain privileges by opening the \\.\VBoxDrv device and calling DeviceIoControl to send a crafted kernel address.
O3 Security · Runtime Protection

Is CVE-2008-3431 being exploited in your environment?

Detect and block the exploit chain at execution, on systems you cannot patch yet.

Protect my workloads How runtime protection works
Actively Exploited: CVE-2008-3431: Virtualbox (High 8.8)